[kradroy]

I don't think it contradicts the point.

When you have a legacy system that "sits in the corner" earning money, you're [the company] paying engineers to retain their services in emergencies. Features get added too, if you're interested in keeping or gaining customers. So construction cost as a proportion of total cost does trend to zero.

The company/stockholders doesn't care about hot new technologies. They care about revenue. Customers don't care their software is written in this or that framework or is powered by deep learning. They care about stable, usable, useful apps. Businesspeople know this. Many engineers do not. I think that disconnect causes much strife in tech businesses.